


Real Gone Kid

by KirkyPet



Series: The Shipping Forecast [5]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Imaginary Friends, Kids are embarrassing, Kids' games, Max's past, Plans For The Future, Relationship Development, Rescue, bereavement, cute kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 19:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10170323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirkyPet/pseuds/KirkyPet
Summary: Furiosa and Max find a kid in the Wasteland. Max opens up about his past. Childhood memories. Hope for the future, plus a bit of unexpected revelation.





	

They were just two days out on their first trip together. It had been pretty uneventful. Their main objective? To drive until they found a secluded spot, where they could park up...in short, they did nothing that would much interest anyone but themselves.

Until they spotted something that broke the restful monotony of the landscape. A burnt-out van. No sign of activity. They drove nearer, weapons ready. Pulling up the Interceptor about a hundred yards away, they approached the wreck. Windscreen shattered, burnt out but no signs of explosion. Charred remains of two people inside, probably both women. Furiosa and Max shared a glance. Looked like they'd run out of guzz just in time to be raided. Maybe didn't have much to steal, so the raiders burned the car out of spite.

"Hmm, what's this?" Max looked closer at the driver's door. There were signs of attempt to prise the door open from the outside, scratches and dents about halfway down. Soot had been wiped and smeared by small hands.

*****

Furiosa takes a look underneath the van. Nothing, nobody, there. Then there's a faint noise over by the nearby rocky rise. They move silently closer to its source. A child is there, maybe about four or five years old. Hair matted and tangled, skin and bone. He's flicking little pebbles on the ground and talking to himself. Occasionally he makes a little croaking cheer from his cracked lips. He doesn't seem to hear them approach. Furiosa crouches down in front of him and says "Hey". Suddenly he lashes out with a small knife, catching her across the left arm. She scrambled backwards in the dust with a startled cry. Max leapt forward and grabbed the kid's thin wrist, forcing him to drop the knife, which he kicked away. He let got of the child and darted over to Furiosa, who was pressing her black scarf tightly to the wound.

"It's okay, he's just scared." She nodded to the boy, who was huddled in a crack between the rocks. "Stupid...startled him..." she muttered between gritted teeth.

Max said nothing til he'd examined her wound which, to his relief, was only superficial. He tied it up and looked towards the boy. "What'll we do with him?"

"Water first...no, I'll do it" as Max picked up the canteen. "He's seen me bleed, he might be less afraid now" she said, with a wry smile. The took the canteen from him and edged forwards cautiously. The kid had lost his knife, but she'd have to assume it wasn't his only one. She laid the canteen down on the ground and backed off. They both walked back to the Interceptor, from where they watched the boy dart forward and snatch up the canteen. He scrambled back to his place of safety. Some minutes later, they heard uncertain movements from the crack in the rocks. Furiosa called out "Want food?" A shock of dark hair emerged cautiously. She rolled an apple in his direction, for which he made a scuttling grab. A lump of bread followed it shortly after.

*****

They became aware of small figure creeping tentatively towards them. Max made a shift at packing to leave. The boy came closer, perhaps his fear of the strangers replaced by a dread of being left alone. He stepped forward, his hands raised to show he wasn't armed.

"Sorry I cut you" he quavered.

"That's alright. Just don't do it again." Furiosa replied, still packing her bag. "We aren't going to hurt you" she turned to him and said softly "We want to help. What's your name?"

The boy looked at her for a moment, then replied "Toots."

"Are you alone, Toots? Is there anyone with you?"

"No...they got burned. Only Tony and me got out."

"Who's Tony? Is he here?" Furiosa looked around quickly.

"Tony's my friend, but he lives _faaaaar_ away."

 _Hmmm, bit weird_ , thought Furiosa. "Do you talk to Tony?"

"Yep. He keeps me company when I'm by myself."

 _Okay, imaginary friend. That's probably alright, then._ "How long have you been by yourself, Toots?" She probed further.

The kid looked around, then at his hands and down at himself, as if to find something to give him an indication. Then he brightened, burying his hands in his matted hair, pulling it about. He held two fingers out about two inches apart. "This long." he concluded.

Furiosa nodded and glanced up at Max. "Sharp" he smiled.

*****

They left him wrapped in blankets, playing with his pebbles and chewing a piece of hard biscuit.

"Poor kid. What do you make of this Tony business?" Furiosa asked.

"Probably kept him sane all this time" Max replied. "As long as he doesn't start talking to his finger..."

"Eh?"

"Just something from a...show I saw once" he shook his head dismissively. "Not important."

"We should get a bit more out of him, just to be sure he's not going to freak out again."

*****

"What you playing?" Furiosa crouched down near Toots, this time making plenty of noise as she did so.

"Subbuteo. Tony taught me. You've got two teams and you have to get the ball in the goal. Tony's better at it than me. He knows how to flick them better. That's how you kick the ball. I'm better at singing."

Max asks him to give them a song, but Toots shakes his head and goes quiet.

*****

"You okay?" Furiosa followed Max to the car where he seemed to have retreated.

"Kid's scared of me."

"Well...it looked like there were only women in the car. Maybe he's not used to men. Besides, you _are_ a bit scary." She meant it as a joke, but he looked pained. Before she could think of what to say, he'd turned away abruptly. He was walking over to where Toots sat. He sat down a respectful distance away, with his hands on his knees. Toots looked at him warily. Max seemed to be trying to find words. He looked up at Furiosa almost appealingly, where she'd followed him at a distance. He looked like what he was going to say was a much for her as it was for Toots.

"I had a kid, once. A little boy" he said to Toots.

"Not any more?"

"No. Bad man killed him."

Toots regarded him solemnly for a moment. "I had a daddy".

"Mm?" Max inquired.

"Don't 'member him. Mum and Aunty said he was nice. Got this" he fumbled in his pocket and produced a long dreadlock tied round a button. He put out a small hand for Max to shake. "I'm Toots."

"Hi Toots. I'm Max."

*****

Toots wandered off to find more pebbles. Furiosa came over to where Max was sitting. She knelt down by him and reached out to touch his shoulder, uncertainly. She doesn't know what to say.

He looked up at her. "Should have told you before now."

She buried her face in his hair. "You're not really scary." He chuckled a little and hugged her closer.

"That's not all I need to tell you" he murmured and looked at her almost apologetically. "His mother, my wife... _my partner_ " he hurriedly added, knowing that 'wife' had a different meaning in Furiosa's experience. "She died too." He didn't know what to expect from this disclosure, either from himself or from her. He'd told her on impulse, the only way he probably could have got the words out. He hadn't spoken of Jessie in...how long? He didn't know how it would affect him. Would he break down here, in front of Furiosa? No. It was strange, but he was only concerned with how she would take the news. So he looked up at her steadily, inquiringly.

"She was your One" she said softly, nodding.

He nodded back. "Long time ago..."

Furiosa seemed to think for a moment, then blinked as if dismissing whatever thoughts were occupying her. Then she drew him to her, holding him close, stroking his hair a little.

*****

This was kind of a big deal to Furiosa, though probably not in the way Max feared. She'd never known anyone in the Green Place who'd had that kind of relationship, who'd paired for life. It certainly wasn't discouraged, but the social dynamics of the place made it difficult. But Max had chosen, and had been chosen, for life. ' _Til death do us part_ , they used to say.

Lots to think about...but now wasn't the time. He needed comfort and she wanted to give it.

*****

Toots came back from his expedition to find Max and Furiosa sitting together where he'd left them. He plonked down in the dust to sort his stash into two piles.

"Find anything good?" Furiosa asked.

"Yup. Got to pick my new teams."

"Looks like a good game." Max said. "Show me?"

After about ten minutes of detailed tuition, Toots looked up and announced "I think my dad was like you."

"I bet he was much better than me."

"And did you kill the bad man?"

Max looked away briefly. When he looked back, his face was resigned. "Yes" he replied.

"Good. I'm going to do that when I'm bigger. To the men who did _that_." He pointed towards the burnt out van. Max made a mental note to get the two women out of the van and bury them in the morning.

"Don't" he shook his head. "Doesn't help."

*****

"There's a place near here. We've come from there. They'll look after you. Will you let us take you there?" Furiosa asked Toots.

"Can't I come with you?"

They shared a look."It's too dangerous. You need looking after."

"I'm tough" the emaciated kid declared stoutly.

"I know you are" she smiled. "But you'll like it there. Lots of kids to play with."

He brightened at this. "Do they play Subbuteo?"

"I don't know. Maybe you can teach them." That settled it.

*****

When they got settled comfortably for the night, Furiosa asked Max "You know when you said you'd seen a show? About a kid talking to his finger...? How...? I thought they'd finished long before our time."

His eyes grew dim, faraway. Furiosa was sorry she'd asked, if it brought back painful memories. But a smile appeared in them, suggesting happier times than she ever suspected he'd experienced. "I grew up in the city. My family stayed when others left. Didn't want to give up."

"Brave."

"Stubborn, maybe."

"What was it like? The city, I mean."

"Breaking. Broken. But we stayed in our house, got food okay. There were few enough people left by then, and we could still grow some things ourselves. I went to school for a while, Dad went to work. Mum too, some days. Helping out anyone, really."

Furiosa thought of how different it must have been. All the changes he'd seen between then and now. There and here.

"And there was still power. The electric grid, I mean. That's how I saw my shows" he smiled a wry smile.

"I thought they'd stopped those long before. Keep said so, anyway."

"They'd stopped broadcasting. But we had some recorded. Like Dag's records, but you could watch them on a screen. VHS, it was called. We used to sit and watch them, while the power was on."

"What was the one with the kid and the finger?"

"'The Shining' it was called. I was too young to watch that, really. Had nightmares about _that_ for a while." But he chuckled little at the memory. Just the normal scary dreams of childhood, then.

"How'd you end up here?"

"When my parents died...they got sick and died within days of each other...I stayed for a while. Then moved to the outskirts. Had a new family for a while...then just kept moving. Further and further away. No reason to stay."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment and turned a little, resting her head on his chest, trying to imagine. What a strange life he must have had. To have seen all those far-off things, things she thought already belonged in the past, long before she was born. He must have learned to survive as he got older. Though it was probably as tough, in its own way, to survive in that breaking city as it was out here in the dust and the emptiness.  _Family_...she wondered what had happened to them.

Furiosa felt his breath in her hair, and looked up to see him looking down at her quizzically. He raised an eyebrow in a wordless question. Then remembered he probably ought to vocalise it...

"You...What was it like before...all this?"

She closed her eyes, dug deep into her own childhood memories. "There were fruit trees. Not like the spindly little ones on the terraces. Great old gnarly spreading ones."

Max sighed. He missed trees. And fruit trees were the best. They gave so much.

"And long grass for pasture." she continued. "Goats' milk. Cornfields. The Green Place had always been there, I think. But the Mothers occupied it two, three generations ago. They said they saw which way the wind was blowing."

"So they left the party early? Good survival tactic."

She nodded. "It worked for a while. We thought it'd last forever, but we were kidding ourselves" she sighed, with a shrug.

"Everything changes. Got to know when to move on. They did it once, then you showed them how to do it again. Who knows when next time'll be?"

She took a deep slow breath, to process this thought.  _Yes, maybe that was it_. There would always be Green Places. You just had to know where to find them. This was a hope that could hold out against disappointments. Didn't rely on the past, could see a future ahead. Hope wasn't a mistake, it was a promise. A gift that needed to be given little and often. Like he'd just given her. She wanted to give some back.

She sat up and looked him in the face. "If there's another Green Place out there, we'll find it. Together. I promise you." She held out her hand, like he had when they agreed to turn back. He grasped it and drew it to his lips.

*

Furiosa took the first watch. _There was a kid to look out for_   _now._ As Max drifted off to sleep, leaning back against her chest, he felt that, for the first time in numberless years, a plan, a future was forming in his vision. They would go together and find a new Green Place if it took them a lifetime.

*****

They're packing up the Interceptor for the return journey to the Citadel. Toots trots round after Max, talking constantly. Max was a little exhausted by all the attention. When Toots wasn't talking about Tony and Subbuteo, he'd ask probing questions in a whisper that was more audible than usual speech. _Kids don't learn to whisper until they learn what it is to be embarrassed_ , he thought.

"Is the lady your special friend?" Toots was having trouble with the name 'Furiosa'. They'd tried him with 'Fury', but be kept calling her 'the lady', which amused her hugely.

"Hmm, yes, suppose so" replied Max, blushing slightly. He wondered how much of this Furiosa was hearing.

"My mum and dad were special friends."

"Ah?"

"I know a lot about special friends" Toots declared, quite proudly.

"Do you?" asked Max apprehensively, wondering where this was going.

"Yup. Aunty told me. They hold hands, kiss, fight and make babies. Do you do that?"

"Um, sometimes" replied Max, reluctantly feeling that honesty was the best policy.

"You have babies?" asked Toots hopefully.

"No..."

Toots looked disappointed. Max felt strangely impelled to add "But we haven't been special friends for very long..."

Behind the Interceptor was a crash that sounded exactly like a full can of guzz being dropped on a foot. Muffled swearing followed. Max sighed.

*****

While Max drove, Toots looked with interest at Furiosa's truncated forearm. The prosthetic aggravated the cut on her arm, so she's left it off since meeting Toots.

"I hurt it when I was about your age" she offers, before he can ask. "Got a metal arm now though." She picked up it and waved it at him.

Toots looked suitably impressed.

*****

The kid's jaw dropped as they approached the Citadel. It tended to have that effect. Furiosa and Max would have agreed, if the topic had ever come up, that they'd both thought it a spectacular sight when they first saw it, even under the influence of terror, rage, grief and resignation. It probably looked like an adventure playground to a kid who'd be _rescued_ rather than captured.

*****

Max led Toots away, discreetly briefing Capable about his history and imaginary friend as they walked. Furiosa was forced to stay put by the quizzing of the others.

"Three days! That's how long you could stay away. Bet you missed us!" cried Cheedo, giving her a hug.

"Cute kid. Need to feed him up a bit, though" said Toast, nodding after the departing trio. "Hey, what the hell happened your arm?"

"The cute kid can look after himself when he needs to" said Furiosa significantly.

**Author's Note:**

> I might have been a bit self-indulgent in my references here. Tony is NOT the Tony from 'The Shining'. No-one is psychic in this series. Or an axe-murderer, for that matter. So far, anyway.  
> Toots is named after Toots Hibbert, from Toots and the Maytals (whose music always makes me smile). Because I've been listening to a lot of reggae when I was writing this and I thought it'd be cute name for a kid OC. His Wikipedia entry takes great care to emphasise that he is NOT related to Tony Hibbert (veteran Everton defender). This tickled me hugely. Because every famous person with the same surname is related, unless you specify otherwise.  
> So Toots' imaginary friend is basically Tony Hibbert, who teaches Toots to play Subbuteo (if you don't know, this is a table-top version of football. Soccer, if you must).  
> No-one gives a crap about this, I know. But ideas have got to start somewhere.
> 
> It was a bit of a challenge to find a song-related title for this one.
> 
> 'Real Gone Kid' - it sounds to me like it's about memories. Plus, I like the song.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SD4lI9GKUE


End file.
